Current key-based user input technologies present various limitations due to the decreasing size of devices and consequently the space available devoted to user input. Some of these problems include: 1) a large number of small keys which cause the user to hit the wrong one, 2) sequential pressing of a single key to select one of a number of possible letters, 3) having to switch between different input mode screens to enter letters, numbers, or punctuation, 4) predictive completion methods that provide the wrong suggestions, 5) limited or no capability to enter punctuation, control characters, or function keys, and 6) having to introduce artificial delays between certain character combinations.
Standard 104-key, WINDOWS keyboards are usually laid out in the QWERTY scheme and provide a full American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) character set via shift keys in addition to other functions. These are large and prevent any minimization at least because each letter and number must be individually represented. As a result, the various re-arrangements of QWERTY keyboards for laptops are large and hardly more compressed.
More compressed schemes for cellphones, particularly non-internet-connected cellphones with nine to twelve buttons for text entry, are simply based on original phone button inputs like that in U.S. Pat. No. 5,392,338. This scheme allows only input of letters, numbers, and the special characters * and #. The inputs for cellphones have been improved very little, instead relying on auto-completion or, for small keys, auto-correction.
A rarely-used scheme for more efficiently entering a limited set of characters (A-Z, 0-9, and ?![%(@)]) is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 6,847,706. This patent uses two different key presses for rarely-used characters and double key presses for common keys, while requiring special keys for spaces, backspace, and switching between letters and numbers. The keyboard provides no capabilities for other characters such as commas, periods, or quotes. Finally, the device treats soft-keys differently from mechanical keys, using a select/unselect process for soft-keys instead.
The U.S. Pat. No. 6,847,706 patent relies completely on directionality for the user to translate key-press-sequences into the correct character. This requires that certain keys wrap around and use opposing keys to correspond with the directions provided on some outside keys. Likewise, peripheral letters on internal keys require a press on a key neighboring them in the key pad. In addition, this prior patent requires switching between number and letters with a separate dedicated key called “alpha-numeric” which means that numbers do not follow the same entry method as letters. Thus, this patent is not useful for complete text entry applications.
The essence of this invention is to provide a solution to all of these problems in a uniform, logical, deterministic, user-friendly manner by employing a small keyboard apparatus containing a number of textual and control characters per key and a method for the user to easily indicate which of said characters is to be selected.
This invention provides a method and apparatus to improve the speed of entry and extend the number of textual and control characters that can be entered from a smaller set of input devices. As a result, the invention provides a means to reduce the number of keyboard input devices required to support a given set of textual and/or control characters.
This invention provides complete 104-key keyboard functionality on a matrix of twelve input keys that comprise a physical keyboard or an on-screen keyboard. Deficiencies in the standard character entry methods, where multiple presses of the same key are used to select different characters assigned to that key, are eliminated so that no pausing is required, and generally only two presses of the input devices are required to enter a ASCII textual or control character.